K. “I’ve done what I could, but without any success so far. Of course, my petition isn’t
finished yet.” “How do you think it will end?” asked the priest. “At first I thought it must
turn out well,” said K., “but now I frequently have my doubts. I don’t know how it will
end. Do you?” “No,” said the priest, “but I fear it will end badly. You are held to be guilty.
Your case will perhaps never get beyond a lower Court. Your guilt is supposed, for the
present, at least, to have been proved.” “But I am not guilty,” said K.; “it’s a mistake. And,
if it comes to that, how can any man be called guilty? We are all simply men here, one as
much as the other.” “That is true,” said the priest, “but that’s how all guilty men talk.” “Are
you prejudiced against me too?” asked K. “I have no prejudices against you,” said the
priest. “Thank you,” said K.; “but all the others who are concerned in these proceedings are
prejudiced against me. They are influencing outsiders too. My position is becoming more
and more difficult.” “You are misinterpreting the facts of the case,” said the priest. “The
verdict is not suddenly arrived at, the proceedings only gradually merge into the verdict.”
“So that’s how it is,” said K., letting his head sink. “What is the next step you propose to
take in the matter?” asked the priest. “I’m going to get more help,” said K., looking up
again to see how the priest took his statement. “There are several possibilities I haven’t
explored yet.” “You cast about too much for outside help,” said the priest disapprovingly,
“especially from women. Don’t you see that it isn’t the right kind of help?” “In some cases,
even in many I could agree with you,” said K., “but not always. Women have great
influence. If I could move some women I know to join forces in working for me, I couldn’t
help winning through. Especially before this Court, which consists almost entirely of
petticoat-hunters. Let the Examining Magistrate see a woman in the distance and he
knocks down his desk and the defendant in his eagerness to get at her.” The priest leaned
over the balustrade, apparently feeling for the first time the oppressiveness of the canopy
above his head. What fearful weather there must be outside! There was no longer even a
murky daylight; black night had set in. All the stained glass in the great window could not
illumine the darkness of the wall with one solitary glimmer of light. And at this very
moment the verger began to put out the candles on the high altar, one after another. “Are
you angry with me?” asked K. of the priest. “It may be that you don’t know the nature of
the Court you are serving.” He got no answer. “These are only my personal experiences,”
said K. There was still no answer from above. “I wasn’t trying to insult you,” said K. And at that the priest shrieked from the pulpit: “Can’t you see one pace before you?” It was an
angry cry, bat at the same time sounded like the unwary shriek of one who sees another fall
and is startled out of his senses.
Both were now silent for a long time. In the prevailing darkness the priest certainly
could not make out K.’s features, while K. saw him distinctly by the light of the small
lamp. Why did he not come down from the pulpit? He had not preached a sermon, he had
only given K. some information which would be likely to harm him rather than help him
when he came to consider it. Yet the priest’s good intentions seemed to K. beyond
question, it was not impossible that they could come to some agreement if the man would
only quit his pulpit, it was not impossible that K. could obtain decisive and acceptable
counsel from him which might, for instance, point the way, not toward some influential
manipulation of the case, but toward a circumvention of it, a breaking away from it
altogether, a mode of living completely outside the jurisdiction of the Court. This